Georgia Senate race in three way tie, according to latest poll

American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Norm Ornstein tells WSJ's Jerry Seib that Republicans have a big chance of winning back control of the Senate in the 2014 midterms, provided they don't suffer any self-inflicted wounds during the primary...

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Another poll in Georgia Senate Republican primary race, released Wednesday night, shows a three-way tie with former Secretary of State Karen Handel, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston and businessman David Perdue fighting it out for the top spot, less than a week before the May 20 election.

According to the survey, Kingston is slightly ahead with 20.5 percent while both Handel and Perdue get 20.1 percent of support. A distant second spot belongs to U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey with 12.1 percent of the vote. Perhaps most significantly, the poll found 11.7 percent still undecided.

The poll was conducted May 12-13, just a few days after a recent poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). The AJC poll matched up each Republican candidate with likely Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn and showed Perdue as the only candidate within the margin of error but still behind Nunn, with the Democrat leading 45-44.

Since none of the Republican candidates will get 50 or more percent of the vote, the GOP primary will go into a runoff to be held on July 22. That leaves Nunn plenty of time for fundraising while her Republican challenger will have to keep investing in his or her primary battle.

As the GOP primary becomes more heated, the New York Times (NYT) just changed its prediction in Georgia to tossup, from leaning Republican. Although they still consider Nunn the underdog when matched up with Kingston and Perdue, the NYT now views Georgia as one of the red states that Democrats can take over in 2014.

The biggest issue for the Democrats in Georgia will be turn out. Historically, the party with the President in the White House is less likely to come out to vote in mid-term elections. While many say that Nunn should stay away from President Barack Obama, whose approval ratings took a beating in the last view months, he is still very popular among Democrats in the Peach State. If anyone is going to convince them to come out in large numbers, it probably is the President.

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Ewa Kochanska, a transfer from Warsaw, Poland, works as a freelance journalist and photographer in Atlanta, Georgia. Hailing from a politically volatile Central Europe, Kochanska easily picks up on governmental shenanigans that might otherwise go unnoticed. Contact her at ekochanska@columnist.com.